This invention provides processes and apparatus for providing lane-level route guidance for individual vehicles of various types through transportation networks for making trips between widely separated trip origins and destinations and methods for managing regional and corridor traffic at the lane level through measurement, simulation, and optimization to identify effective routing strategies for one, some, and/or very large numbers of diverse motor vehicles. The invention also provides for improved methods and apparatus for traffic planning and management as well as traffic simulation and prediction.
There are great inefficiencies in the usage of road networks that come from poor choice of routes and lanes by individual drivers, leading to congestion and delay for both the individual driver and large numbers of individuals traveling in other vehicles. Emergency vehicles struggle to get to their destinations and often are not certain of the best routes to take or which lanes of travel would be the fastest for their mission. Known navigation and traffic management systems that could potentially identify and implement congestion-relieving guidance are primitive and may even be counter-productive when the same information is given to all drivers.